


Discoveries by Lamplight

by DorotheaT



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 07:55:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17762816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DorotheaT/pseuds/DorotheaT
Summary: Julian meets Lucio for the first time on the battlefield, and for the first time in his tent.





	Discoveries by Lamplight

When fighting, it was easy to forget what sort of man he was.

On the battlefield, he was graceful and assured. His movements sealed the promises his bragging made, the bragging that was easily dismissed. I know I dismissed it many a time. But I suppose that was what made him all the more deadly, then. You could underestimate a man like that. Blond and structured, just under the edge of sharp in features, with a sneer and a boast all wrapped in silken clothes and shining leather. Bare chested where armor should be. Taunting and beckoning, daring an enemy to try to land a mark.

They never did.

I watched from safety. It was not my time to go out onto the battlefield. I was no warrior. It was his turn, and of those like him. He was not a big man, and he was surrounded by larger men and women, heartier and battle-hardened. They all turned their noses up at him. But then they would see how he fought. A flash of steel, a dignified pose, and a trail of bodies. They respected him, or, perhaps, feared him because they didn’t understand why people like them died and he _just kept on living._

He added refinement to a gruesome trade. It was as if death commissioned him itself. A silly notion.

I looked away as the soldiers clashed, and prepared myself. It would be a long night, and I knew that there would be no sleep for me. Again. Even though our casualties would be slim, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any.

The battle ended after hours of steel meeting steel amidst terrible yelling and screams. The field was destroyed. It had once been a grassy flat, but was now trodden and muddy, and embedded with bodies and the filth they expelled upon death. I headed out along with the other medics, my boots sinking into the filth. It was beginning to rain.

I passed him, as he was moving into camp. Blood that wasn’t his was sprayed across his torso and face. It dripped off his sword, still unsheathed. He ran a hand through the sodden mess that was his hair, slicking it back once more.

Our shoulders almost brushed. I stepped out of the way before they did. He spared me a scoff. Then a smirk.

I could feel his eyes on me as I moved on. But he was fine, and unharmed. There wasn’t a mark on him, like always. He was in no need of my attention, so I did not give him any. I found the soldiers who did, the ones laying in the mud, pleading for help. I knew what to do with them.

It was late when the last patient was seen to. Late, as in, the sun was beginning to rise to a new day. I sat just outside the medical tent, free from my uniform jacket and gloves, my eyes tired, but my head too full for sleep. The rain had stopped hours ago. I was hungry, but I felt exhaustion keep me to the chair. Not physical exhaustion. But something in my bones, in my heart.

I had not wanted to be a doctor for this.

I’d wanted to help people, but I was just repairing people who leapt into pain as if for fun. They didn’t _need_ to do this. They had a choice. I’d wanted to help those who were helpless against their ailments. But now I was so far into this mess, I didn’t know how to extricate myself. Me leaving would not stop what they were doing. Me staying could at least save some of them.

He stepped into my field of vision, then, distracting me from my thoughts.

Gone was his usual red garb. He was in trousers and a shirt, and was clean of blood, but otherwise, he was so casual in his appearance. I doubt he knew anyone was watching him. He had moved from his tent to the mess, which was gearing up for breakfast. There was no warm food to be had, but I watched as he managed to cajole cheese, bread, fruit, and a bottle of wine from the annoyed cooks.

My stomach rumbled. I put a hand over it and groaned to myself. He caught the movement and turned his head up, just enough so that I knew he looked my way in the distance.

He then headed towards me.

I stiffened, worried I had crossed some boundary I was unaware of. But I forced myself not to move, even as he neared and held out the plate of food towards me. I gave a polite smile, or what I hoped was a polite smile. I stammered as I waved it away. “I…couldn’t possibly…”

“Unless you’d like to wait another hour.” He motioned with the plate again. I reached up and took a piece of bread before the plate was swiftly taken away. My questioning gaze was met with him taking a bite from another piece of bread before began to walk away.

‘Uh…thank you,” I managed. “Lucio.”

“Are you coming or not?” He asked, sparing me a glance over his shoulder.

 _Coming or…?_ I blinked.

He stopped before the entrance of his own tent, but when I did not follow, he ducked inside. I sat up straighter. Had I missed something? Was I being invited in? He had a strange way about it, if that was the case.

Despite my confusion, I found myself standing and heading over to the tent. I paused by the entrance. There was no way for me to knock, as the flaps were cloth. There was a light inside, so I knew he was still awake. “Lucio?”

“I haven’t got all night,” was all he said. I lifted the tent flap and peered inside. There was a lamp lit, but the light was low to the point of being dim. The plate of food had been set on a small chest. He sat on his cot, a pomegranate in one hand, a knife in the other. He scored the rind, then dug his fingers inside to prise it open. The red seeds inside glittered in the flickering lamplight. “Don’t come in here with those filthy boots.”

I looked down at my boots. They were practically crusted over with mud and blood. I sighed and shed them, and entered in stocking feet and my shirtsleeves. I stood there for a moment, and watched as he plucked a few seeds from the fruit. He popped them into his mouth, then set the fruit on the plate to sample the bread and cheese. “I take it you wanted to see me?”

“I wanted to see you?” He blinked. He grinned, and turned his blue eyes to me. They were rimmed in black, keen and narrow. He hadn’t yet wiped off the make up for the night. “I thought, Doctor, that it was _you_ who wanted to see _me_.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Please, Doctor.” His grin ebbed a bit, a sharp brow rising. His gaze looked me over. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you staring at me. I understand it must be…hard to speak to me. I suppose I may be intimidating. So I thought I’d make it easier for you and just…cut to the chase.”

My eyes widened at that, and I fear my mouth must have slid open as well. He said it so nonchalantly, and his chuckle suggested that he was so convinced of it…I didn’t know what to do. Or say. But my body gave that away, as I felt my face warm with blush. How embarrassing.

“What?” He said, amidst a laugh. “Cat caught your tongue?” His tease fell away to a slight, untelling smile. “Come. You must be tired.” He motioned with the bottle of wine to the cot beside him. I looked to the wine, then the cot, then him. “When someone offers you something, Doctor, it is only polite to accept.”

Somehow, his words kicked me into motion. I went and took up the wine, then sat down beside him. He waited as I drank straight from the bottle, then motioned to the food before reclining back on some pillows. I shaved off some cheese, and more bread. My stomach was grateful. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

I looked to him. He was giving me a smug sort of expression, his head balanced by his hand. “What makes you so sure that what you say is true?”

“Because I know it is,” he said. “Are you going to deny it? I am not particularly fond of liars, I must warn you.”

I thought. Was that what I was doing? Was I unknowingly giving him my silent attentions? I looked to the bottle in my hand. My reflection was barely discernable on the glassy surface. I couldn’t tell anything from the muddled expression that could have given him that idea.

“You weren’t even aware, were you?” He sat forward and brushed a bit of my hair out of my face. “How…adorably intriguing.” His fingers traced my jaw and chin before grasping me firmly. His lips brushed against mine just enough so that I could feel the wicked curl of his lips. “If I was mistaken, let me know now. I will not make you stay.”

I swallowed, hard. What harm could it do, to admit it? He was so close. I convinced myself that I had stared because I wanted him. Surely…that was why. Somehow, it didn’t seem so far fetched, because if I did not want him then, I found myself wanting him now. What harm could it do?

What harm indeed?

“You were not mistaken,” I said resolutely. I leaned toward his lips. He moved away, just enough so that he could enjoy the quirk of my brows in response to the tease, and to reward me with a grin, before he kissed me.

His was a kiss of a hint of teeth and a consuming grasp of my mouth with his, my neck with his hand, and of his fingers against my waist. He didn’t shut his eyes, not completely. I let myself be pulled in, and shut my eyes, just so I could escape his wily stare.

He pulled away with a chuckle. An easy laugh teased me before he pulled the wine away, but not before taking a drink himself. He set it down somewhere unimportant, and then returned to me with another kiss. It remained at my lips for a moment, while his hands undid the fastenings of my shirt and pushed it down my shoulders. His other hand tilted up my chin and he kissed down my neck…before raking his teeth up my throat.

It sent a tightening squeeze down the nerves of my arms and hands. I felt the thrill of it all through my legs, my toes, and back up into my groin. I moaned a gasp between kisses. He spared me an appreciative smile, either for me or for the effect he had on me. Perhaps he was just proud of himself.

His hands guided me down into the cot. His leanly sculpted frame rose over me, his teeth bared in a grin. I suppose I could have been anyone, the way he looked at me. He didn’t know me enough to find me a conquest. He didn’t even know my name.

The slight of his nails scraping down my chest in a possessive curl gained my focus. Those hands, which had just been killing people mere hours ago, gave a deceitful, soft trail to the waistband of my trousers before yanking the fastenings away. The force at which he pulled the cloth down my legs made me feel that he would tear the garment if I did not remove them. I could not move fast enough to lift my hips or my hands. The garments were discarded somewhere into the dark corners of the tent.

I was aware of how naked I was and how naked he was not as he ground his clothed self against me. His narrow stare took me in, with a hand to follow his gaze. It was a grasping, clawing possession, one that left marks on my pale skin. I found myself beginning to get lost in the sharp contrast of near pain and the lack thereof. I allowed him to pull my hands above my head, and kept them there when he let go. He bent to suck upon a nipple, harshly, before biting. My moan came with a start of my body, but he did not relent. He pressed me down as his teeth nipped and bit here and there. I almost cried out, and received a hand against my mouth.

“The camp is waking,” he warned me. “Keep it down.”

I nodded, but he did not remove his hand. His other grasped me between my legs, harshly, too harsh to give anyone pleasure. Somehow, though, pleasure trickled up through the pain. I moaned helplessly, the sound muffled. I blushed anew at it. That should not…I should not have reacted that way.

“Doctor,” Lucio said. I could see his eyes glittering in the dark. “Do you... _like_ pain?”

“I…” I didn’t know. I wanted to say no. But…each time he bit me, each time his nails scratched…I was beginning to forget more and more that I was pinned, naked, under a mercenary and said mercenary was toying with me. The anxiety behind allowing myself to get into this situation had fallen away.

“You don’t know, do you?” He tutted gently. “Oh, if only I’d known. I would have planned this out a bit better. But…perhaps there’s time. This war isn’t going to end anytime soon and…you’ve been with the company for a bit.” He shifted, and his whole body lay flush with mine. “How about it, Doctor? How about we learn all about what you like, hmm?”

I would have agreed to anything, then. He didn’t wait for an answer, and for a moment I feared he would start right then. But he only shifted, taking away his heat, to take off his own clothes. His warm skin settled against mine, and he returned to kissing me. For a moment I feared that he would turn gentle, and I had grown excited and hard under his bites and scratches. But then he reached for something above me, out of sight, and sat back between my legs.

I knew what was to happen next. I’d been with men a few times before, after all. But I could hear his hand moving on his own cock, and neverminding me. He spared me a rough but lubricated touch. I could feel rather than see his grin coming at me from the dark where he knelt. I almost steeled myself. Almost.

He entered me with a rough but not cruel motion, slow, but still unforgiving. I almost rose up to push him away on instinct, but he seemed to sense something that I did not. Something I wanted. It hurt, but…not in a way I could not bear. Discomfort. But…those nerve-tightening sensations returned. I shuddered a bit, and forced myself to relax once more.

Lucio gauged my reaction under his hands. He sank down, filling, stretching, hurting me. The pain spasmed through me, and the effect would have been the same if he had laid gentle kisses upon me, and had pressed inside me softly and slowly. It made no sense. And when it was over, I was sorry for it.

“Don’t tell me that you’ve spent already, Doctor,” he said. His voice was near to my ear. I’d shut my eyes. He pulled my legs wide and laced his arms about my shoulders.

“Jules,” I muttered.

‘What?”

“My name is Jules…”

“I don’t _care_ ,” he replied, with no absence of glee in the fact. He kissed me, deep and hard, as if to rub in the sting of his words. He thrust while his tongue was in my mouth, and laughed at the noise I made.

His motions were not gentle. He wanted a hard but drawn out fuck, something to energize him for another day of fighting. Knowing he did not care, and knowing that I was being used did nothing to quell my desire. It seemed to grow. I kissed him back. I begged with my mouth, with my moans. He ate it up. He laughed as he pulled my hair and bit my lip and made me wail.

The sun had risen, and I was having a harder time keeping myself quiet. We could hear the camp wake and move about us. They wouldn’t be breaking down tents today. There was to be another battle, not much further off. I could smell the warm breakfast being cooked. Soldiers moved about, some of them quite close, with only the cloth of the tent to mask what we were doing. What Lucio was doing to me.

I could see him easier now. Blond hair slicked with sweat, those blue eyes intensely fixated on me. He did not want to miss any flicker of emotion of my face. I knew it wasn’t because he cared of said emotions but more in that it stroked his ego to know that he caused them. He made no reaction to my hands clawing down his back and arms. I almost felt that he looked through me. But those thoughts could not live in my mind, not now.

I could barely catch my breath between the timing of his thrusts. I tipped my head back, and grasped at the pillows behind me, under my head. I was remotely aware that I was nearing the edge under him. I reached to stroke myself, and he swatted my hand away.

A nearly cruel grip surrounded me, and my throat gave a harsh hiss where my voice had been. My body responded to the pain, moving closer towards release where it should have shrank away. I thought perhaps I should be bewildered by it, but, not now. Now when I was so close.

“Come on, Doctor,” he growled into my ear between his own rough breaths. “Or does it take something _more_ to get you off?" He punctuated his words with thrusts that had me grasping at his shoulders to try to steady myself. "Perhaps the _pain_ of hot candle wax, dripping and burning down your chest, against your cock, the inside of your thighs?" I shuddered at the thought of it. At the _want_ of it. "The _sting_ of leather against your skin, a bit of whipping?" His eyes widened with a hint of maniac promise. "Or perhaps I should just slap you now? The back of my hand, right across your face, painful and stinging, and leaving a mark that everyone could see, so that everyone would know  _exactly_ what had happened when you left this tent..."

The words hit me as if he had done as they had teased. I came with an arch of my back, nearly forcing him off the cot. I didn’t know if it was how he was speaking to me, or the imagining of him striking me. Either way, he captured me in a grinning kiss and continued, ignoring my lax and spent form until he, too, came with a few harsh thrusts and a press upon my legs that painfully stretched at my hips.

He sat back and watched himself pull out. His form, glistening with sweat, collapsed back against the pillows. We lay there, for a few moments, until he grew restless and stood. He found my clothing and tossed it at me, then pulled on his own trousers. “You’re a fine fuck, Doctor, but I have things I need to do.”

I got up and winced. I would be feeling the result of our activities for the rest of the day, and my body protested moving so soon. But I dressed anyway, realizing that I would need to bathe and change before attending to my patients.

He looked up at me when I did not immediately leave. He was pulling on a shirt, and paused to brush his hair back across his head. “What?”

I smiled, my mouth curving up at one corner before I reached over and plucked a pomegranate half from his plate of food. “Tonight, then?”

His hands fell to his sides.

“Assuming you don’t die.”

He took the bait. He came over and grabbed the fruit out of my hand, then grabbed my shirt lapels and pulled me close. I was taller than him, but the effect wasn’t lost on me. “Jules, was it?”

I nodded.

He moved as if he would kiss me, and for a moment I believed he would. "The enemy would hope to be so lucky." Instead, he pushed me away. “Tonight then. Now, get out.”

I smirked, but did as he bid, pausing only to grab up my boots on the way out. The day would prove to be as long and as arduous as the day before, only now it was compounded by my complete lack of sleep and the tiresome activities between us. I saw him, again, on the battlefield, as I had the day before. No one could touch him, as he cut through the enemy, as if he were...protected somehow. We passed each other, again. Him leaving the battlefield, and the pain and death he'd caused. Me, walking towards it, to try to save someone. Anyone. Undo what he had done.

But I arrived at his tent that night, tired and wavering on my feet.

He sat there, waiting, a pomegranate in one hand, and a rope in the other.

“Are you ready, Doctor?”

I was.

Indeed, I was.


End file.
